The Caregiver

The Good
The Caregiver really could have been an interesting project. A horror game with realistic environments centered around the job of two women who tend to elderly people is an almost perfect premise for a highly immersive experience filled with eerie, uncanny atmosphere.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the game's design is far too lazy to make proper use of that set up. Despite the overall theme, you perform exactly two job-related tasks throughout the game, and even then the emphasis is put not on your contact with the elderly man you're supposedly caring for, but on arbitrary fetch quests to get the items you need.

The Caregiver doesn't really work well as an adventure/exploration game either, since - again - most of your actions will revolve around fetch quests and backtracking with key items. There is one actual puzzle in the game, but because it's attached to an awkward, janky chase sequence (one of two towards the playthrough's end), it ends up more annoying than challenging or interesting.

The Caregiver mostly fails in its horror aspect as well. The environments are certainly creepy, but the sound design - arguably the most crucial element in a horror game - is extremely underwhelming, hardly ever providing the right atmosphere.

Chilla's Art's games are notorious first and foremost for their terrible optimization. The Caregiver is a prime example of that, with very awkward performance regardless of how good your PC is and at least one game breaking bug that will require you to restart your playthrough.

The Bottom Line
The Caregiver ruins an interesting premise with underdeveloped ideas and lazy, unpolished design. 3/10